What's Next

(Stuff I'm thinking about working on & how you can get involved)ajaygrajani@gmail.com

Unleashing the power of Slack on HR & professional reputation

People at companies who use Slack use it a lot. They communicate (almost all day), share work/accomplishments (actively) and consolidate third party data sources (like Google Analytics & Stripe). I’m interested in looking at ways we can mine such unstructured, natural language data to help companies understand things like: Who are your top performers? Who are your worst? Which relationships/teams are thriving? Which are breaking down? Which interventions work best & when? In real-time, not just during quarterly review week or company retreats.

Now looking for: Slack teams of 25+ people willing to let us access & (confidentially) experiment with their data as well as NLP pros who can help parse, structure & find patterns in it.

Building a betalist for a Fun app my wife is Building

A few months ago, I started playing with a new way of thanking people for helping and/or teaching me stuff. Centered around something simple: a public shoutout. The response was pretty good, and my brilliant wife had a ton of ideas about how to make it better, so we asked our friends at OAB to help us build a simple beta. That’s how our family do :)

Now looking for:20-30 people who want to help beta test the app when we release it next month.

Lining up sponsors & distribution for Employees Only

I recently started working on a video series about the employees of high-growth startups with some friends. The response to our first episode has been awesome. Insiders like it because they share our belief that some of the most interesting & informative startup stories are best told by folks other than those we typically hear from, i.e. CEOs & investors. Outsiders thinking about taking the plunge like it because it provides visibility into what it’s like to work at a startup and what different job functions entail.

CREATING A HACKER’S PLAYBOOK FOR FINDING PRODUCT-MARKET FIT

I spent five super productive and rewarding years helping Grovo & Inventure find product market fit. And for the past year, to help pay the bills & fund my addiction to experimenting with new ideas, I’ve been advising/consulting other founders on how to do similar for their startups. Though finding product-market fit is more art than science, and most of the genius lies in application, I think there’s still value in explaining stuff like fake door testing & cohort analysis, sharing examples of effective applications and providing guidance on how/when it makes sense to use which tactics.

Now looking for: graphic designers & UX gurus with a penchant for storytelling who can help me unpack my experiences & methods into a playbook for “permissionless innovation”.